Qikiqtani Truth
Commission
Community Histories 1950–1975
Igloolik
Qikiqtani Inuit Association
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Text copyright © 2013 Qikiqtani Inuit Association Photography copyright © 2013 Library and Archives Canada, Northwest Territories Archives,
and Tim Kalusha
Originally published in Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975 by Qikiqtani Inuit
Association, April 2014.
ISBN 978-1-927095-62-1
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Errata
Despite best efforts on the part of the author, mistakes happen.
The following corrections should be noted when using this report:
Administration in Qikiqtaaluk was the responsibility of one or more federal
departments prior to 1967 when the Government of the Northwest Territories
was became responsible for the provision of almost all direct services. The
term “the government” should replace all references to NANR, AANDC,
GNWT, DIAND.
p. 11: Unlike many other communities across the Arctic, many of Igloolik’s
families occupied ilagiit nunagivaktangit until well into the 1970s.
p. 12: Those old places are easy to spot. I’ve been to many places by dogteam, in the direction of Pond Inlet and others, where I’ve seen rocks piled
one on top of the other [i.e., Inuksuit]. They were fixed like that by Inuit.
They are everywhere.
p. 13: The major geographical feature for the Amitturmiut were two areas
of open water where two strong currents meet west of Rowley Island, where
seals and walrus are especially abundant.
p. 14: New ice forms during October, and by November, Foxe Basin is almost
completely covered in ice.
|3
4 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
p. 15: The Amitturmiut followed a seasonal round. In winter, men hunted at
seal holes on the thick sea ice. As the days became longer, hunting activity
increased.
p. 15: As one hunter, Louis Alianakuluk, explained in 1974:
pp. 17-18: Should one choose to occupy the land beyond three years, then
they are bound to face peril, which might include death, therefore they had
to follow this rule.
pp. 17-18: Few foreign travellers to the area reached northern Foxe Basin
overland through Arctic Bay or Pond Inlet because the water route to the
area was often dangerous and at times impassable owing to the thick pack
ice that formed in the basin. An early Canadian Qallunaat encounter occurred
in 1913, when Alfred Tremblay, a member of one of Captain Joseph Bernier’s
expeditions, travelled to northern Foxe Basin from Pond Inlet by dog team
while surveying for economic mineral potential. While these explorations
demonstrate early points of contact between Inuit and Qallunaat, the events
also hold as memorable encounters integrated in Amitturmiut stories and
histories.
p. 19: The expanding Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), took over the established trade at Repulse Bay in 1919 and at Pond Inlet in 1921, and squeezed
other British and Canadian firms out after the First World War.
p. 22: In 1931, Fr. Etienne Bazin, an Oblate missionary, arrived in the region
and built a tiny mission at Avvajja, one of the Coxe Islands lying west of
Igloolik Island.
Errata | 5
p. 22: The divide was also geographical; the Anglicans were generally living
and hunting north or northeast of Igloolik Island, while the Roman Catholic missionaries were mostly found farther south.
p. 23: Its establishment and re-establishment dramatically increased the
ability of Inuit to make regular visits to trade, sparing them the long journey
by qimmiit to either Arctic Bay or Repulse Bay.
p. 24: His companions Therkel Mathiassen (Tikkilik) and Peter Freuchen
(Piitarjuaq) are also remembered.
p. 24: Later in this period, a small party of young English scientists, Tom
Manning’s British Canadian Arctic Expedition, also visited Igloolik to study
birds and survey several poorly mapped coastlines.
p. 31: In his reflections about this same period from an Inuit perspective,
James Arvaluk, a prominent politician from Igloolik and an early president
of the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, shares a similar view, but adds that Inuit
were expected to provide labour, not leadership. He also describes all the
changes and plans as creating a “semi-artificial society” because Inuit could
not fully see the “disintegration of Inuit values, Inuit beliefs, or our Inuitness.”
p. 40: Some Inuit worked for the HBC as clerks or general workers, but the
level of distrust between Inuit and the HBC was sometimes high.
p. 43: Long before people began to settle permanently at Igloolik, Anglican
missionaries from Pond Inlet and near Arctic Bay included Igloolik in their
travels, and in 1959, Noah Nasook established a rectory at Igloolik, not far
from Siuraarjuk, where he was born in 1916. Nasook had started travelling
with missionaries in 1938 and “learned bit by bit about the ministry.”
6 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
p. 44: The last of the families came to live in Igloolik from the land in the
1980s.
p. 45: The mushroom-shaped structure designed by the Montreal firm
Étude Papineau Gérin-Lajoie Le Blanc (which also designed Quebec’s pavilion at Expo 67) was built from 1973 to 1974. For many years the building
was home to the Igloolik Oral History Project.
p. 46: Among all the formal and informal organizations and networks
springing up in Igloolik, however, few were devoted to passing on Inuit history
or traditional knowledge.
p. 46: note: this is an important change
The huge concrete iglu was soon boarded up and was eventually torn down
in 1995 after part of the roof collapsed.
p. 48: collected more than five hundred interviews over two decades,
p. 48: Around 1974, Noah Piugaatuk spoke to the Inuit Land Use and Occupancy Project about the erosion of the isolation that had protected Igloolik
and the Amitturmiut.
Dedication
This project is dedicated to the Inuit of the Qikiqtani region.
May our history never be forgotten and our voices be
forever strong.
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Foreword
A
s President of the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, I am pleased to
present the long awaited set of reports of the Qikiqtani Truth
Commission.
The Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
and Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Thematic Reports and Special Studies
represent the Inuit experience during this colonial period, as told by Inuit.
These reports offer a deeper understanding of the motivations driving government decisions and the effects of those decisions on the lives of Inuit,
effects which are still felt today.
This period of recent history is very much alive to Qikiqtaalungmiut,
and through testifying at the Commission, Inuit spoke of our experience of
that time. These reports and supporting documents are for us. This work
builds upon the oral history and foundation Inuit come from as told by Inuit,
for Inuit, to Inuit.
On a personal level this is for the grandmother I never knew, because
she died in a sanatorium in Hamilton; this is for my grandchildren, so that
8|
Foreword | 9
they can understand what our family has experienced; and it is also for the
young people of Canada, so that they will also understand our story.
As it is in my family, so it is with many others in our region.
The Qikiqtani Truth Commission is a legacy project for the people of
our region and QIA is proud to have been the steward of this work.
Aingai,
E7-1865
J. Okalik Eegeesiak
President
Qikiqtani Inuit Association
Iqaluit, Nunavut
2013
10 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
Igloolik
Iglulik
I
gloolik, with more than 1,500 residents, is the second-largest community in the Qikiqtaaluk region, but it was among the last to be firmly
called home by its local population. Unlike many other communities
across the Arctic, many of Igloolik’s families occupied ilagiit nunagivaktangit until well into the 1960s.
The hamlet is located on Foxe Basin, south of Fury and Hecla Strait,
about 70 kilometres north of Hall Beach, 400 kilometres from Pond Inlet,
and 850 kilometres northwest of Iqaluit. Before services and people were
concentrated at the present hamlet, Igloolik, meaning, “there is a house
there,” was the name given to a cluster of large pre-contact dwellings east of
the present community. The name was later applied to Igloolik Point and
Igloolik Island. The bay in front of the present hamlet was called Turton
Bay by nineteenth-century explorers. It is now known as Ikpiarjuk, “the
pocket,” in traditional Inuit toponymy.
Today, people who belong to this hamlet are usually known as Iglulingmiut, but an earlier name for part of the region’s population is Amitturmiut,
a group who frequently travelled to the Pond Inlet area. Those from south
| 11
12 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
of the region, more closely affiliated with Repulse Bay’s people, are among
the Aivilingmiut. They are bound to the sea, land, and ice of the region, and
to each other, through hunting, language, cultural activities, kinship, and
environmental understanding.
The use and occupancy of the area goes back at least four thousand years.
Because the land is now rebounding where it was once deeply depressed
by ancient glaciers, the region’s archaeological sites tell a story of different human cultures, with remains of the earliest on the highest places.
These higher, earlier sites offer archaeologists evidence of earlier populations whose shelters, tools, and tiny works of art were different from those
of Inuit, whose own ancestors have been here for about a thousand years.
Inuit call their immediate predecessors Tuniit. Louis Alianakuluk said to
researchers around 1974:
Yes, and the Tuniit were here before, but they are gone. They’re
gone from here, but the house sites are around. They were other
people before our ancestors. We are here because our ancestors
are real. There will be our descendants who won’t be Qallunaat.
Following the Tuniit, there were several centuries in which Inuit occupied the area and adapted to centuries of climate change. Alianakuluk
spoke about this.
We live here because our ancestors did before us. If they had not
lived here, I don’t know what we’d do, we wouldn’t have anything.
They tried hard to hunt animals in order to live—that’s why we
are living.
Those old places are easy to spot. I’ve been to many places
by dog-team, in the direction of Pond Inlet and others, where I’ve
seen rocks piled one on top of the other [i.e., Inuktuit]. They were
fixed like that by Inuit. They are everywhere.
Igloolik | 13
Not only were Inuit “everywhere,” they were living at a crossroads in
the network of long travel routes linking different parts of the Qikiqtaaluk
region to places farther south and west. When the first European travellers
arrived in 1822, they found that people at Igloolik already had imported
metal implements that reached them by trade with their neighbours.
Igloolik is now the main population centre for the people living on
northern Foxe Basin, whose traditional territory and community hunting
area extends westward across Melville Peninsula, northwards towards the
Arctic Bay area, across and around Foxe Basin to the Piling area of Baffin
Island’s west coast, and south towards Repulse Bay. The major geographical
feature for the Amitturmiut was the area of open water where two strong
currents meet west of Rowley Island, where seals and walrus are especially
abundant. Apart from Igloolik, the region has another main population
centre nearby at Hall Beach, a community that grew in the 1950s around a
DEW Line main station. Although Igloolik is well connected to neighbouring communities by traditional travel routes and modern snowmobile trails,
the northern Foxe Basin region is often considered to be divided from its
neighbours by coastlines with relatively poor hunting.
Igloolik is a community with strong Inuit traditions. It has been called
the cultural epicentre for the Inuit people. If this were at least partly true, it
would be because the marine environment has long supported a large population. As a result, the first permanent trading post in the region dates only
to 1947. Not surprisingly, the RCMP reported in 1953 that “natives in the
Igloolik area appear to adhere more to native ways and clothing” than other
Inuit in the North Baffin and Foxe Basin region. The cultural richness of
the community is known outside Nunavut through many efforts, including
a long-lasting oral history project, dedicated ethnologists and other social
scientists, and Igloolik artists.
This community history can only reveal a small part of the vast amount
of Inuit knowledge and perspective that has been preserved, revealed, and
interpreted to Nunavummiut and to the country and the world at large about
14 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
the Igloolik area. Igloolik is 94% Inuit. It is both a lively community where
Inuit values and practices are integrated into daily life and a government
town that attracts Inuit and non-Inuit inhabitants from other parts of Canada.
Taissumani Nunamiutautilluta
Ilagiit Nunagivaktangit
Foxe Basin is a large body of salt water that, historically, has been covered
almost year-round with ice. The island-studded northern end, lying between Melville Peninsula and the coast of Baffin Island, is more fertile and
productive of sea life than the more open southern end near Southampton
Island and the Foxe Peninsula. The prevailing surface currents flow in from
the ice-clogged Fury and Hecla Strait in the northwest, south to a point
abreast of the north tip of Southampton Island. There the current splits—
an important stream returns counter-clockwise west of Baffin Island, some
flows southwest through Rowe’s Welcome Sound, and the remainder pushes south through Foxe Channel to join Hudson Strait.
Sea ice is of paramount importance to the region’s settlement and history. Foxe Basin has both land-fast sea ice and drift ice. The land-fast ice
extends from some shorelines as much as 10 kilometres into the basin. The
drift ice is characterized by its roughness and constant motion. New ice
forms during October, and by November, Foxe Basin is completely covered
in ice. The ice starts melting in May or June, but it’s not until August that
the ice begins to rapidly disintegrate, with only small patches of loose ice
remaining by September.
Amitturmiut have enjoyed an abundance of sea mammals—seals,
walrus and whales—that thrive in the cold waters of Foxe Basin. Amitturmiut territory also extends westward across Melville Peninsula (largely for
Igloolik | 15
caribou hunting), where good travel routes exist and are frequently used
between Igloolik and northern Baffin Island.
The Amitturmiut followed a seasonal round. In December and February, men hunted at seal holes on the thick sea ice. As the days became
longer, hunting activity increased as they moved onto the ice to hunt seal
and walrus. Two sea-ice villages were usually established, one near Igloolik
Island and the other north of Hall Beach near Foster Bay. As spring arrived,
the families moved to the shoreline, where they continued hunting seal and
walrus, and began travelling inland onto Melville Peninsula to hunt caribou. In summer, the inland caribou hunts intensified in the search for hides
Igloolik Hunters
in prime condition for clothing. In September and October, as the ice began
nwt archives
to freeze over and the days became shorter, people
finished their preparations for winter and moved
into their winter dwellings.
The relationship with the land was not a purely practical thing; it went to the heart of what it
meant to be Inuit. As one Elder, Louis Alianakuluk,
explained in 1974:
If I were asked by a [Qallunaaq], “Are you
happy with your land?” I’d tell him that I was
very happy with it. It has animals and you can
see for miles. It seems barren, but if you travel,
you see animals. Seeing live animals gives the
greatest joy to Inuit.
Amitturmiut adapted over centuries to the
unique challenges of Foxe Basin. Their understanding of weather patterns, ice, animal activities,
and astronomy were integrated into everyday lives
through practical instruction of young people as
16 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
Igloolik | 17
well as through stories, a rich cosmology, and spiritual beliefs. Interaction
with nature was based on a great respect and inherent understanding of
the need for stewardship of the animals, and of the land and sea. Hubert
Amarualik spoke eloquently to researchers in 1993.
A land could only be occupied for three years. No one can live on
this land beyond the three years . . . That was the way they lived,
always moving to another [place], never occupying one land beyond three winters . . . The land itself was prevented from “rotting”
by this. Should one choose to occupy the land beyond three years,
then they are bound to face peril, which might include dearth,
therefore they had to follow this rule.
This understanding of the region’s resources and migration patterns
Researchers in the 1960s identified eight main Amitturmiut hunting areas
opposite page:
Young Inuk wrapped
in white fox fur, 1953
in the period from 1930 to 1966, each consisting of some core settlement
library and archives
locations with a surrounding land-use area. These areas often overlapped
canada
meant Amitturmiut did not inhabit the same winter ilagiit nunagivaktangit year after year, but moved in order to give the land time to recuperate.
slightly with the use areas of neighbours, but were strongly associated with
particular families.
Early Contacts
The first documented visit by Europeans to Foxe Basin was from 1822 to
1823, when Captains William Parry and George F. Lyon sailed their Royal
Navy vessels, HMS Fury and HMS Hecla, into the basin. Later, in 1867 and
then in 1868, American explorer Charles Hall travelled to the area to investigate the fate of the missing Franklin Expedition. Both times, Hall travelled
by dog sled north through Repulse Bay along the coastline. Many other
18 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
early foreign travellers to the area reached northern Foxe Basin overland
through Arctic Bay or Pond Inlet because the water route to the area was
often dangerous and at times impassable owing to the thick pack ice that
formed in the basin. An early Canadian Qallunaat encounter occurred in
1913, when Alfred Tremblay, a member of one of Captain Joseph Bernier’s
expeditions, travelled to northern Foxe Basin by dog team while surveying for economic mineral potential. While these explorations demonstrate
early points of contact between Inuit and Qallunaat, the events also hold
as memorable encounters integrated in Amitturmiut stories and histories.
Changing Patterns of Life
Unlike Inuit in many other parts of Qikiqtaaluk, Amitturmiut had little direct contact with Scottish or American whalers, who were regular visitors
at Pond Inlet from 1820 and at Repulse Bay from 1865. Despite this, Amitturmiut traded for imports by making long trips to meet the whalers, or else
they traded with Tununirmiut in Northern Baffin Island and Aivilingmiut
at Repulse Bay. The introduction of firearms and whaleboats changed the
hunting, settlement, and mobility patterns of the Amitturmiut. Initially,
firearms were specialized tools for hunting particular species under specific
conditions, such as during the winter caribou hunt, when the white background and crunchy snow prevented a stealthy stalking of the prey. While
the scarcity and high cost of ammunition in the region slowed their adoption, over time guns became more widespread. By the 1930s, the hunting of
seals and walrus involved both traditional technologies and rifles.
Amitturmiut acquired whaleboats much later than Aivilingmiut at Repulse Bay and used umiat (skin boats) instead:
People here did get wood to frame their boats. They would use it
to tow a walrus, and they made it so that it could carry a number
Igloolik | 19
of people. They used skins to cover the frames; they used sealskins
and bearded sealskins for covering, and walrus hide when it was
torn. That is how it was when they began to use boats.
The introduction of sturdier wooden whaleboats had a significant
impact. As one Inuk explained, the whaleboat “was a great convenience to
us compared with the skin boats, right to the time when it got flexible because of long use. It was able to haul in two walrus carcasses . . . Because we
needed a lot of meat to survive, boats were important in the walrus-hunt.”
The new whaleboats eventually led to the abandonment of the umiat as the
whaleboats were more stable, allowed for greater visibility when hunting
and travelling, and could carry more hunters and heavier loads.
By the 1890s, some American whaling ships were wintering occasionally at Repulse Bay, and in 1903 Scottish interests began a regular yearround presence at Repulse Bay as well as Pond Inlet, both accessible to the
Amitturmiut. The expanding Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), which took
over the established trade at Repulse Bay in 1919 and at Pond Inlet in 1921,
squeezed these and other British and Canadian firms out after the First
World War. These permanent and well-supplied trading posts reinforced
existing patterns of trade and travel and provided Amitturmiut with more
stable access to manufactured goods.
The trading posts required people to travel greater distances and further incorporate trapping into their seasonal harvesting cycle to acquire
boats, guns and ammunition, foodstuffs, and other imports. One incident
of travel of this kind has become famous because it intersected with a great
tragedy that befell a party travelling through the region. For many years, visitors to Igloolik were told about the terrible experience of a woman named
Ataguttaaluk, who with her second husband Ituksarjuaq, was powerful at
Avvajja and Igloolik after 1920. As a young wife, Ataguttaaluk and her first
husband were in a party of a dozen people who ran out of food in unusually deep snow in the interior of Baffin Island. Their long absence left other
20 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
Inuit fearing the worst, and a party including Fr. Mary’s informant, Atuat,
set out with great misgivings on their own trip to stock up on ammunition.
As Atuat told the story more than half a century later, the horror of finding the young woman surrounded by evidence of cannibalism was matched
by her condition. They approached her melting and broken iglu where her
husband had posed his harpoon, telescopes, and rifles to attract attention.
When I reached the edge of the hole, I grabbed my mother’s clothing. Ataguttaaluk was there in it. However, what a horrid sight!
She was like a bird in its egg. She seemed to have a beak and like
some sorts of miserable small wings because she no longer had
sleeves, having eaten part of her atigi.
Two men in fur
library and archives
canada
Igloolik | 21
Man cutting meat
while woman looks
on, 1953
library and archives
Rescued by these relatives, Ataguttaaluk returned to Igloolik and regained her health. She was an early convert to Catholicism in the 1930s. Igloolik’s Ataguttaaluk Elementary School is named in her memory and honour.
The introduction of western technologies and increased importance
of fur trading affected the seasonal migration cycle of Amitturmiut. People
cached more food from the summer walrus hunt and were able to live off
these caches well into the winter. Anthropologist David Damas states that
with the introduction of the whaleboat and firearms the inhabitants of
the region went through the “stage of their greatest economic well being
from the stand point of meat production.” The rich resources of Foxe Basin
canada
22 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
attracted people from Pond Inlet and Repulse Bay during the 1920s and
1930s. According to some estimates, the population of Foxe Basin may have
doubled during this period.
The 1920s also brought the Amitturmiut into contact with the RCMP.
The Force established a detachment at Pond Inlet in 1923, and the first recorded patrol from there to northern Foxe Basin came that same year, when
the police came to collect a participant and some witnesses involved in the
1920 killing of trader Robert Janes. After this, RCMP attempted a patrol to
the Foxe Basin region annually.
A more significant cultural change crossed from Pond Inlet to the Igloolik area in the early 1920s. This was Christianity, brought by an Inuk
named Umik, who preached a crossing of Anglicanism with Inuit spirituality. This was one of the distant offshoots of a mission established in
Cumberland Sound in 1896, from which Christianity spread, aided by the
printing of gospels in Inuktitut syllabics. Over time, however, many Christian ideas were absorbed into Inuit culture, without completely ending the
influence of earlier beliefs or practices. With the later overlay of Christian
ideas through Canadian law, many Inuit practices related to marriage and
kinship, including spouse exchange, disappeared.
In 1931, Fr. Herve Bazin, an Oblate missionary, arrived in the region
and built a tiny mission at Avvajja, one of the Coxe Islands lying west of
Igloolik Island. It soon burned, and in 1937, Fr. Bazin moved east to Igloolik
Island. He was joined there by Fr. Jean-Marie Trebaol and the tiny Mission
vessel St. Thérèse, which brought building materials for a new mission station. This became the first permanent Qallunaat establishment in northern
Foxe Basin. Initially, this establishment had little impact on the hunting
and migration patterns of Amitturmiut, although some Elders and injured
or sick Inuit chose to stay near the mission. Additionally, the rivalry between competing Catholic and Anglican missionaries also created serious
social divisions among Inuit in the area. The divide was not only dogmatic,
but also geographical; the Anglicans were generally found living and hunt-
Igloolik | 23
the HBC building its first post on Foxe Basin north of Repulse Bay. Unfa-
Inuit children
playing in front of
the RC Mission,
September 1958
vourable ice conditions prevented resupply and forced the post to close be-
library and archives
tween 1943 and 1947. Its establishment and re-establishment dramatically
canada
ing north or northeast of Igloolik Island, while the Roman Catholic missionaries were mostly found farther south.
In 1939, the Qallunaat presence on Igloolik Island was reinforced by
increased the ability of Inuit to make regular visits to trade, sparing them
the long journey by qimmiit to either Pond Inlet or Repulse Bay.
Apart from traders and missionaries, the Amitturmiut also had contacts with a wider world through the occasional party of visiting scientists.
In 1921, a party of Danish and Greenlandic scientists calling themselves the
24 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
Fifth Thule Expedition entered northern Foxe Basin as part of their quest
to collect Inuit songs and traditions and to pursue their grand ambition to
discover the origins of Inuit as a separate people. Their leader, Knud Rasmussen, is still remembered as Kunuti in Igloolik. His companions Therkel
Mathiassen (Tikkilik) and Peter Freuchen (Peterjuaq) are also remembered.
Later in this period, a small party of young English scientists, Tom
Manning’s Cambridge Arctic Expedition, also visited Igloolik to study birds
and survey several poorly mapped coastlines. In 1937, Graham Rowley’s archaeological excavations at Avvajja confirmed the existence of a distinctive
ancient culture in the Foxe Basin that had earlier been named the Dorset
culture. In the 1950s, the Danish archaeologist Jorgen Meldgaard, whose
work on Igloolik Island and the Fury and Hecla Strait continued the earlier
work of Rasmussen and Rowley, explored the rich human history of the
region over four millennia.
In the period after 1930 when missionaries and fur traders were becoming established at Igloolik and white fox trapping was most profitable,
there was little direct government involvement in assuring a minimum level
of well-being for the Amitturmiut. While the RCMP tried to conduct annual patrols from Pond Inlet and distributed a certain amount of food or
ammunition as “relief ” when they met people who were experiencing hard
times, anything to do with medical care or other assistance was handled by
the HBC or the missions. Schools were still in the future, the annual government supply ships to the Eastern Arctic never got this far up Foxe Basin,
opposite page:
Woman working
with a fox pelt, 1953
and aircraft, though seen once or twice in the late 1930s, were extremely
library and archives
auxiliary and short-lived intermediate sites across northern Foxe Basin. At
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this point, the federal government began to play a more sustained role in
rare visitors. This changed suddenly in 1955, when the US Army Air Force
established a DEW Line main station at Hall Beach, along with several
the southerly parts of the Amitturmiut territories, with inevitable ripples
throughout the region. By 1958, there were almost 150 people camped on
Igloolik Island, 100 of whom lived at the settlement and hunted at the floe
Igloolik | 25
26 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
edge, the other 50 living 8 kilometres east of the post at Igloolik Point. The
regional Inuit population (including Hall Beach) was considerably larger,
well over 600 in 1965.
Sangussaqtauliqtilluta,
1955–1966
The Amitturmiut region experienced two sudden changes in the period
after the Second World War. In the QTC community histories, these sudden changes are called Sangussaqtauliqtilluta, meaning “the time when
we started to be actively persuaded, or made to, detour or switch modes.”
These words underline the fact that people went through enormous changes in a short time. Not all changes were harmful, but all required an effort
to adapt traditional ways of thinking and living, to new circumstances. The
main tendency in this period was to break up a life in which whole families and kin groups coordinated their efforts to produce food and maintain
their social cohesion. In the earlier period, Taissumani Nunamiutautilluta,
a centre like Igloolik existed only to provide trade goods and other imported services to people who continued to live in dispersed settlements
around their regions. In the Sangussaqtauliqtilluta, people became centralized or “sedentary” in the community and moved outwards from it to
carry on their traditional activities. In the words of an observer, the people
moved from a relationship with the land which was “simple and profound”
to a new relationship in which the new settlement was dominated numerically by Inuit, but socially by Qallunaat, whose business was “conscious
social change.”
For the Amitturmiut of northern Foxe Basin, these disruptive events
occurred in two stages. The Americans forced the federal government into
Igloolik | 27
action in 1954 when plans were finalized to construct the massive radar defence program, known as the Distant Early Warning Line, across the Arctic
from Alaska to Greenland. When the US Army Air Force established the
FOX-Main DEW site south of Igloolik at Hall Beach, new opportunities for
casual employment, medical care, and other attractions were created in the
region. Hall Beach quickly acquired a year-round Inuit population.
The second stage was more fully planned and directed by the federal
government as part of a general program to bring government services into
the North, and to prepare for economic development. With the changes introduced by the DEW Line, the federal government’s Department of Northern
Affairs and National Development began to re-examine the former policy
of encouraging Inuit to continue hunting and trapping from their widely
distributed habitations on the land. In the mid-1950s, official policy was
to encourage Inuit to adopt southern ways wherever the impact of contact
was already strong, but to buffer the more remote settlements against sudden change. Three important policies cut across all communities, although
the government did not seem to understand how big an impact they would
have.
The first policy was a major public health initiative to eradicate tuberculosis, which led to the evacuation of sick Inuit to hospitals in the south.
For the people of Igloolik this meant evacuation by air. Second was the policy of universal education, usually delivered with rosy promises of jobs in the
communities. The third program was Inuit housing, which was meant to
provide comfortable and healthy living conditions, which it eventually did,
but at a higher cost than intended. These three policies had the somewhat
surprising result of producing the speedy relocation of almost every family
into a sedentary life in a few centralized settlements. As a result, they can be
seen as markers of the Sangussaqtauliqtilluta period, but it would be years
before their implications became evident.
The significance of the changes during the 1960s was not fully recognized at the time. The two missions and the HBC were joined by a little
28 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
school, a nursing station, and some houses for Inuit. In the meantime, the
sealskin trade began one of its periodic slumps in 1964.
In this short period, however, more and more children were separated
from their parents for health treatments and schooling. Some students lived
in the hostel in the settlement but others, especially Catholics, were sent to
the Chesterfield Inlet Indian Residential School and its residence, Turquetil
Hall. In his autobiography, Paul Quassa describes being picked up at Manittuq
by airplane at the age of five or six. In addition to the stories of sexual abuse,
he writes about the physical punishment. “There was a lot of strapping,” he
writes. “I remember one teacher who actually punched the students.” Young
children were separated for long periods of time outside the safety and caring
of their families. Brothers and sisters could see each other from across rooms
and outside, but they were not allowed to find solace in the other’s company.
As the population at Igloolik grew, people who were used to living
in small multi-family groups with flexible membership found themselves
dealing face to face with literally hundreds of Inuit who were, if not strangers, not close relatives either. Some Elders began living year-round near the
nursing station. A co-operative was established to compete with the HBC
in retail and the fur trade and to help organize the carving industry. The
federal administrative machinery mushroomed, with a settlement manager, a social welfare agent, a new RCMP detachment, and Inuit employees
for each of these bodies. Each of these changes increased the number and
strength of the Qallunaat who had power over the lives of individual Inuit.
Some power contributed to the well-being of people and families. Some
changes, however, came at a high cost, and others actually caused distress.
Another major change, shared with other Qikiqtaaluk communities at
different points in the 1950s or 1960s, was the elimination of dog teams,
which were essential to life on the land but difficult to feed or control in
large numbers in the settlement. Qimmiit were among a family’s most important possessions. Although they bred easily, they represented a major investment in training and feeding in order to pull the heavy loads that made
Igloolik | 29
Inuit such mobile hunters. Qimmiit also helped keep their owners safe from
polar bear attacks, and could sense how to move safely while hunting for
walrus across ice. Once people made their permanent homes in Igloolik,
they were under constant pressure to get rid of their qimmiit and this often
led the authorities to shoot any qimmiit running loose, even if they were
only visiting from a smaller settlement on the land.
Igloolik qimmiit were some of the finest in the Arctic. Because of their
importance to Inuit, Qallunaat observers monitored and reported to Ottawa changes in the condition of the region’s qimmiit. Disease among qimmiit was reported in the Igloolik region in 1949 and again in 1958 when an
infection, probably distemper, killed an estimated three hundred qimmiit.
Louis Uttak told RCMP interviewers that he remembered the area administrator destroying many qimmiit, including another Inuk’s entire team.
Qimmiit were shot when they were loose, no matter whether they were under the control of their owner or not.
When dogs get loose, they would get shot. It was so very bad. There
was one particular incident where this person was going to tie his
dogs as he was returning, before he had a chance to tie his dog[s],
all of his dogs were shot. He had just returned from a trip. . . . You
would unharness them, and the dogs would run around before
they settle. They would go all over the place for a while, then they
will return, close to the dwelling of the owner. That was the way the
dogs behaved . . . I also mentioned that this white man use[d] to
shoot the ones that were active, therefore, they were favourable . . .
Very much so, the only thing we depended on for our hunting, when
the government came to town, they started shooting off our dogs.
Gerhard Anders, a visiting researcher in 1965, linked the growth of
population at Igloolik to the administrator’s concerns about qimmiit.
30 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
With more people moving into Igloolik and Hall Beach, every attempt has been made to cut down the number of dog teams. This
must be based on persuasion on the part of the area administrator
of all those whose dog teams have been found superfluous by him
after careful investigation of each individual case.
Anders admitted in the same report that people still living on the land
still needed their qimmiit as their only means of transportation. The snowmobile was still in an early stage of development, and not many Inuit could
afford one. Even in the settlement, the dog team was still dominant in 1965.
Three years later, in 1968, the RCMP reported that there were almost as many
snowmobiles as dog teams but unlike other settlements, the dog teams were
not being completely replaced. Well into the 1970s, many Iglulingmiut preferred the dog teams to snowmobiles for safety reasons. The use of qimmiit at
Igloolik has never been completely abandoned, although now the main use is
to earn revenue from tourists, while outfitters keep the old skills alive.
Nunalinnguqtitauliqtilluta,
1966–1975
Agendas and Promises
The increase in government programs offered at Igloolik during the 1960s
forced the community to adapt to changes driven from the South. The programs put more emphasis on employment, market relations, and adaptation to the requirements of the federal administrators. These organizations
were based on southern organizational structures rather than on Inuit ways
of governance based on Inuit structures of kinship and adaptation to the
Igloolik | 31
physical environment. One of the results of a more focused government gaze
on Igloolik was the arrival of researchers who were now more interested in
studying and planning adaptation than in understanding traditional society.
In this era of stress and confusion, an outsider, Keith Crowe, left a detailed and optimistic account of how the new way of life was taking shape.
Crowe arrived in Igloolik in 1965 to research the area’s economy. He had
experience in Nunavik and in Pangnirtung, spoke Inuktitut well, and had
the academic skills needed to describe and explain the core trends in a fluid
situation. Crowe used the term “tutelage” to describe the Inuit situation in
Igloolik. As a group, many Inuit were acquiring cross-cultural and business
skills, as well as other tools they would need to work more closely with Qallunaat. In return, they were led to expect jobs, good health, and material
comforts. In his reflections about this same period from an Inuit perspective, James Arvaluk, a prominent politician from Igloolik and the first president of the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, shares a similar view, but adds that
Inuit were expected to provide labour, not leadership. He also describes all
the changes and plans as creating a “semi-artificial society” because Inuit could
not fully see the “disintegration of Inuit values, Inuit beliefs, or our Inuitness.”
Crowe divided the agencies of contact or “tutelage,” as they existed at
a single time of drastic change, into two categories, government and nongovernment. By far the most powerful, and the most strongly dominated by
Qallunaat, were the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (now the AANDC), the Indian and Northern Health Service (INHS),
and the RCMP. The eight non-government bodies at Igloolik were the HBC,
the Roman Catholic and Anglican missions, a co-op, the newspaper, a community association, the Scouts and Guides, and a youth group.
A recent arrival, though by far the most powerful of these government
bodies, was the AANDC, as it controlled the schools, the housing program,
social welfare, and the power plant. The AANDC’s area administrator
quickly gained the nickname “Angukak,” or “chief,” in recognition of his
control of most of the money flowing into the settlement. Although wage
32 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
earning in the 1960s was secondary to the business of hunting, jobs were
becoming an important part of total earnings, and the AANDC had a great
deal of control over who got the jobs.
In the 1950s, the AANDC decided to put a school near each trading
post in the Eastern Arctic, with a small hostel intended for the children
of parents who wanted to continue hunting. The first school was built at
Igloolik in 1960 and two eight-bed hostels were added in 1961. In 1962, the
Student receiving
instructions from
her teacher
school had grown to three classrooms, with fifty students in grades one to five.
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in “small isolated settlements where it is not practical to establish schools.”
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Many Amitturmiut children, especially Catholics, were already attending
In the mid-1960s, planners in Ottawa forecast that Igloolik would
soon need a hundred-bed hostel for all the young people currently living
Igloolik | 33
residential schools—fifty were at Chesterfield Inlet in 1965, with a handful of older youth at the Churchill Vocational Centre. The Igloolik hostels
closed about 1968, because by then almost all the students’ families had
homes in the settlement.
Inuit demonstrated their concerns for appropriate education and for
students in the upper grades to be taught in the community, rather than
in Iqaluit or Churchill, when in 1968 the Igloolik Community Association
petitioned for a secondary and occupational school. In response to a followup letter sent by the Roman Catholic priest about the petition, a bureaucrat
from the education branch of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development explained very clearly that students needed training in
a variety of courses to prepare them for “employment opportunities both
locally and elsewhere” and that small communities could not expect to offer
these types of courses.
Attendance at Igloolik’s primary school was rising in parallel with the
growth in the settlement’s population. Eight Qallunaat teachers for grades
one to six taught 187 students in 1970, the same year that authority over
education was transferred to the Northwest Territories from the Department. Inuit leaders continued to press for higher grades to be added to the
community schools. In 1979, however, Igloolik’s Ataguttaaluk School was
still only offering classes up to grade nine, with barely one teacher per grade.
With regard to education in their community, Iglulingmiut were taking the lead in identifying general northern problems and proposing solutions. The frustrations of the 1970s came to a head with a petition to the
legislature in April 1978 to staff the school in a way that would respect Inuit
traditions and prepare young people for life in their own environment. On
behalf of Inuit parents, the petition stated:
The Igloolik education committee is asking for an Inuk teacher
who will teach throughout the school year. The teacher should be
classified as a regular teacher and should make the same salary
34 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
Igloolik | 35
as a qualified teacher. It is quite difficult to survive in the North.
Students must be taught this essential skill. I am not saying we are
against the white teachers. It is obvious that the students must be
taught traditional northern skills and not all students will be able
to find employment after they leave school. Students are not getting out on the land often enough. They do not have time to learn
survival on the land. When they get a full-time Inuk teacher the
opportunity for them to learn how to survive on the land will be
much better. The traditional way of life should not be forgotten.
By the 1980s, pressure from Iglulingmiut and others was succeeding
in putting more Inuit teachers and teaching assistants in classrooms, adding higher grades to cut down on both dropouts and residential schooling,
organizing community educational councils, and making more learning
available on the land. In spite of these efforts, many Elders still believed
that not enough was being learned, including important knowledge about
navigation and place names. Noah Piugaattuk, for example, criticized two
young men who got lost twice on their way to Pond Inlet. “I lectured them
saying that they were ignorant . . . They were old enough but they were not
trying to know these things.”
The greater emphasis on schooling was accompanied by a dramatic increase in house-building in Igloolik between 1965 and 1967. A large number
of Inuit were enticed to settle in the community by the promise of housing.
Only eight houses had been built from 1962 to 1964, while more than sixty
were erected from 1965 to 1967. By the time the boom was over, very few
families were living outside the settlement.
The program to build houses in Igloolik was part of a larger program.
In 1965, the federal government approved a housing program that would
ship 1,560 matchbox houses north. That year more than 20 houses were
erected in Igloolik, prompting the local RCMP constable to protest against
the direction of the current federal policy.
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Students sitting at
their desks
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36 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
I believe that the major problem, which the administrators will
have to face in this area in the not too distant future, is one which
will arise as a result of the influx of Eskimos to the settlements
of Igloolik and Hall Beach, Igloolik in particular. The Eskimos
should be encouraged to remain in the camps. If the long range
plan is to provide every Eskimo family with a house, then they
should be built in the camps where this is applicable. If a closer
relationship between the Eskimo and the administrator is desired
then the administrator should visit the Eskimo in his camp. This
not only applies to the administrator but to any other white person who has an occupation dealing with the people. The idea of
keeping the people on the land would benefit them both in the
area of morale and economically.
His perspective was completely out of step with the government’s intention to prepare Inuit for development of the North. Another twenty-four
homes were erected in 1966. Along with the shipments of houses came a
government-sponsored program aimed at teaching Inuit how to live and
operate in their new homes, and to live in a community based on southern
suburban models.
Long-time resident of Igloolik Eli Amaaq recalled a government administrator coming to his camp with promises of free housing if Inuit moved
to the settlement. He stated that housing was one of the main reasons for
moving to the settlement. In presenting the option for families to move to
Igloolik, administrators rarely, if ever, explained in clear terms what the
costs would be, culturally or financially. Once living in the settlement, families had to pay rent and heating from income and social transfers and they
found it difficult to engage in many customary social practices, such as maintaining multi-generational households and handling food in the new houses.
Some RCMP were favourably impressed with the housing scheme
in Igloolik, at least initially. In the detachment’s annual report for 1967,
Igloolik | 37
Igloolik RCMP reported that the local housing committee was entirely
Inuit in composition and that it had set rent from $2 to $467 per month,
depending on the ability to pay. A year later, however, they were reporting
that overcrowding was already becoming a concern because there were too
few houses.
Until 1969, the AANDC was still responsible for organizing municipal
services everywhere in the NWT except Yellowknife, and this was only gradually shifted to the NWT government in the 1970s. In the 1960s, Igloolik
was served by a short, rough airstrip suitable for small aircraft. Most passengers and cargo were carried to or from Igloolik via boat or autoboggan
through Hall Beach, which provided a link to larger centres such as Iqaluit,
Winnipeg, and Montreal. Accompanying the 1965–67 housing program
was the construction of holding tanks for the oil that heated the homes and
trucks to deliver oil, water, and other essentials throughout the growing
community. Water came from lakes on Igloolik Island, trucked in by the
co-op and delivered to homes. The co-op was also contracted to collect garbage and honey bags, and to deliver refuse to a dump east of the settlement.
Honey bags were plastic bags used in “honey buckets,” large pails equipped
with toilet seats where household sewage was disposed.
The AANDC also encouraged Inuit to participate in government-organized advisory committees. While the groups were promoted as a means
for Inuit voices to be heard, the structure and boundaries of the committees limited their effectiveness and ensured that the government remained
in control of major decisions related to rule, regulations, and funding. The
housing association, for example, helped householders deal with government, advised government on training programs for people who were new
to living in wooden buildings, and ran a regional conference on the theme
of education for housing occupancy and management. Similarly, an Eskimo
Council advised administrators on matters particularly affecting the Inuit
in the settlement. It also advised on priorities for making investment in
community improvements through the Community Development Fund.
38 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
During the 1960s, the government moved to increase health care services in Igloolik. Prior to this, missionaries and traders were sometimes
able to treat minor injuries or ailments. The first professional nurses in the
region were assigned to the DEW Line site at Hall Beach in 1956. A small
health care centre was established in Igloolik in 1964, which was replaced
two years later by the nursing station, staffed by two nurses. In the mid1960s, formal training for nursing assistants and technicians became available at the Churchill Vocational Centre, while the nurses in Igloolik also
provided practical training to girls within the community.
One of the last of the three administrative agencies to set itself up in Igloolik was the RCMP. Until 1964, the RCMP only visited Foxe Basin about
once a year from Pond Inlet. In 1960, the rise in the region’s population to
about five hundred prompted an official in Ottawa to ask, “How have we
for years managed to stay out of Igloolik?” He went on, “This is one of the
larger settlements in the North and if we have no man there why do we need
one in the smaller places?” The RCMP opened the Igloolik detachment in
November 1964.
By this time, with the growth of the AANDC field staff, the RCMP had
already shifted away from their traditional role of looking after the wellbeing of Inuit on the land, towards more conventional policing responsibilities. Crime was not a problem in the 1960s, as the annual detachment
reports make clear, but drunkenness was a major concern in the settlement.
Flights from Iqaluit and trips to Hall Beach gave people access to liquor,
and many people knew how to make homebrew.
Iglulingmiut took steps to deal with drunkenness. In 1967, Inuit members of the settlement council met and issued a notice that was tacked to
the front door of every house in Igloolik. The RCMP, possibly through the
services of the Inuit special constable or Fr. Fournier (who was a member of
the council but not invited to the meeting), translated the notice in its annual detachment report. The core sections of the notice stated:
Igloolik | 39
We are genuinely concerned that we must do something before
somebody is accidentally frozen to death or before somebody is
murdered as a result of a drunken brawl. We have all heard of the
terrible things that are happening to our people in Frobisher Bay
because of liquor. We must control the liquor situation here in Igloolik and in Hall Beach before our communities become another
Frobisher Bay.
The notice asked people to refrain from drunkenness and to keep any
liquor out of sight. It demonstrated that the council understood that the
desire for alcohol was to be expected, stating:
We know that there will always be liquor, that it is used all over
the world and that it would be impossible to stop its consumption.
There are many white people and Eskimo people who know how
to drink properly. We all know that anybody can get drunk if he or
she wants to, but we, your Community Council, urge you, let there
be no drunkenness in Igloolik.
The council also set out rules about the consumption of alcohol and
warned, “When anybody breaks our rules or is reported for doing so we will
ask that person to appear before the Council and discuss his or her alleged
improper conduct.”
The RCMP initially reported that the community council was an effective means of dealing with people who became drunk and misbehaved,
stating, “So far this method appears to be working for there have not been
any repeaters.” Senior officers in Ottawa took positive notice of the settlement council’s approach, but disturbances connected to alcohol would continue to be a major concern for the community and the RCMP. In the 1970s,
marijuana entered the community through employees of the DEW Line,
which added to the challenges of dealing with substance abuse. One person
40 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
who testified to the QTC explained that hashish, marijuana, and alcohol
were easily procured by anyone who lived near the bases.
Shaping Community Life
In 1966, eight other organizations were present in Igloolik—two churches,
two commercial enterprises, two youth groups, a community association,
and a small local newspaper. Qallunaat created all of these bodies, but Inuit
were gradually taking more interest in them. In Crowe’s opinion, four bodies stand out as having influenced and prepared Iglulingmiut for change—
the HBC, the Igloolik Co-operative, and two mainstream churches. In his
opinion, the level of Inuit leadership was highest in the Anglican Church,
followed by the co-op. With hamlet status, Inuit became directly involved in
managing local affairs to the extent permitted by law.
The HBC had arrived permanently in Igloolik in 1947, when Inuit purchasing power was being boosted by family allowances (a universal social
program of the federal government) but also when fur prices were falling.
The HBC was a dominant, monopolistic force in the Eastern Arctic during the era when most people lived on the land, and it remained deeply
involved in the fur trade and retail trade well into the 1970s. Some Inuit
worked for the HBC as clerks or general workers, but the level of distrust
between Inuit and the HBC was often very high. James Arvaluk witnessed
a very young Inuk who had travelled a full day to the HBC store in the early
1960s to obtain tea, tobacco, and sugar on credit on behalf of his very sick
father. The manager handed him two sealed envelopes that Arvaluk could
see contained tea bags in one and cigarette butts in the other. Arvaluk wrote
that this episode was a “turning point in my life.” He wanted to get more
education to address the injustices inflicted by authorities, especially the
HBC. In 1966, despite depressed fox and sealskin prices, about one-quarter
of Inuit income came from furs. Most of this cash, and the larger sums from
Igloolik | 41
government wages and social transfers, left the region through purchases at
the HBC store.
The Igloolik Co-operative was set up in 1963 as part of the federal government’s effort to involve Inuit in the market economy. Fr. Fournier, a Roman Catholic priest who lived in the community for many years, helped the
co-op. As a result, initial membership was drawn mainly from the Catholic
part of the community. The co-op was originally set up in a surplus DEW
William Calder at the
HBC Post in Igloolik
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42 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
Igloolik | 43
Line building that had been shipped from Rowley Island. In 1965, the coop and its retail store burned, but were quickly rebuilt. By 1970, its income
came from many enterprises—stevedoring, erection of houses, municipals
services, boat rentals and charters, operation of a post office, retail store
sales, and sales of furs and carvings in the rest of Canada.
St. Stephen’s Catholic Church is the community’s oldest agency of contact with the world beyond Nunavut, and was present—first at Avvajja and
later at Igloolik—since 1931. The decision of the missionaries to build at
Ikpiarjuk in 1937 led to development of the settlement there. The Catholic
missionaries converted many Inuit, but shared the field with not only the old
beliefs and practices associated with shamanism but with the Anglicans. In
a general way, the Catholic Inuit hunted west and south of the community,
while the more numerous Anglicans were farther north. The Catholic clergy
were, among Qallunaat agents, most likely to stay in the community for
many years and to speak Inuktitut. Inuit built the remarkable stone church
that dominated Igloolik’s townscape for a generation under the direction of
Fr. Fournier. They hauled stone by dog teams to the site for its construction.
St. Matthias Anglican Parish grew out of the widespread conversion
of Inuit to the Anglican faith, which was well established at Pond Inlet
before 1930. Long before people began to settle permanently at Igloolik,
Anglican missionaries from Pond Inlet and Arctic Bay included Igloolik in
their travels, and in 1959, Noah Nasook established his rectory not far from
Siuraarjuk, where he was born in 1916. Nasook had started travelling with
missionaries in 1938 and “learned bit by bit about the ministry.” He was
ordained a deacon at Aklavik in 1962 and was priested in Iqaluit two years
later. In between, he built St. Matthias Church at Igloolik, where he continued to serve his congregation until his sudden death in 1990.
Crowe commented on the ways in which religion shaped both how and
opposite page:
Inuit unloading in
front of HBC store,
September 1958
where people lived around Igloolik. He did not feel that divisions along reli-
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gious lines were as severe as in other dual religious communities in the Arc-
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tic, stating that kinship ties and a sense of regional identity helped to defuse
44 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
religious disagreements. Some Inuit saw things differently. Paul Quassa described a community and families divided between Anglicans and Catholics.
The last of the families came to live in Igloolik from the land in the
early 1970s. Despite the suddenness of change and some divisions in the
population, Iglulingmiut worked hard together to exert as much influence
as they could. The reward for this was the willingness of the NWT government to transfer municipal responsibilities in two relatively easy phases.
When the last government-appointed settlement manager left in 1971, the
Church in Igloolik
Council asked that he not be replaced. This left the community council to
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deal directly with the different government departments that had agents in
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the community.
Igloolik | 45
The procedure for approving hamlet status for Igloolik in 1975 was
“informal.” After itemizing the different social and infrastructure programs
managed by the current council, the regional manager recommended an
early granting of hamlet status.
The Council has a good understanding of its responsibilities both
as a Settlement and as a Hamlet. Its operating procedures provide
for the effective disposal of Council-business and its administration appears capable of functioning at the Hamlet level. The general understanding and involvement of the community is sufficient
to ensure the maintenance of democratic processes and continued
political development. The Council provides the necessary leadership in the community and represents the various groups within it.
People were making their own decisions about how to preserve their
culture, interpret it to visitors and newcomers, and transfer what was
most important down the generations. In 1973, for example, Igloolik voted
against having television brought to the community because it was only
available in English.
Southerners considered Iglulingmiut to be “traditional Inuit,” due in
part to the remarkable documentation from explorers, and to the short
length of time it took for the settlement to become the organizing influence
in the broader area. This made Iglulingmiut an attractive target for scientific
investigation. The International Biological Programme Human Adaptability Project, initiated in 1968, studied the physical and cultural traits of the
Iglulingmiut and other groups from the Igloolik Scientific Research Laboratory. The mushroom-shaped structure designed by the Montreal firm Étude
Papineau Gérin-Lajoie Le Blanc (which also designed Quebec’s pavilion at
Expo 67) was built from 1973 to 1974. After the original research program
ended, Inuit-led research programs took over the building. It remains one of
the most intriguing examples of modern architecture in the North.
46 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
Among all the formal and informal organizations and networks springing up in Igloolik, however, none was devoted to passing on Inuit history or
traditional knowledge. These types of organizations were, presumably, considered to be the responsibility of every adult. In 1972, however, the Inummariit Society was founded in Igloolik to protect Inuit traditions. One of its
first actions was to erect a cement iglu that would act as a cultural resource
centre displaying artefacts from ilagiit nunagivaktangat life. Qallunaat visitors to Igloolik were sent to the Igloolik Cultural Centre to learn more about
Inuit culture, while Elders recounted memories of their former way of life.
As anthropologist Nancy Wachowich has pointed out, not all Iglulingmiut
were happy to see their past packaged and placed on display. One Inuk,
upon returning from boarding school, visited the centre shortly after it had
been built. She found her grandmother’s qulliq, a lamp used for heating the
home and cooking food, on display. Wachowich described how the woman
felt when she saw the display.
[She] felt a chill run down her spine when she saw her grandmother’s qulliq in the Cultural Centre, sitting cold and positioned
beside others of various sizes and shapes on a shelf. Just a few
years earlier, she said, she had watched her grandmother carefully
tending this same qulliq’s flame in their tent.
The museum in the concrete iglu did not operate for long. Part of the
reason was the incompatibility of the Inuit sense of time and more southern
ideas of historical presentation of the past. The Iglulingmiut traditions were
ongoing—they were not a static happening of the past. The relationship of
Inuit to the land and customary practices was intimate, apparent, and continual, not a bygone memory only existing in a museum display. The huge
concrete iglu was soon boarded up and was eventually torn down in 1995
after part of the roof collapsed, killing a child.
Igloolik | 47
sold to local Inuit and the HBC. The importance of sewing to household and
Gathering of Inuit
community at Igloolik,
May 1965
community economies for Iglulingmiut has been well documented. The fact
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that women opened a sewing centre, which may have been a predecessor
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Arnait Katujjiqatigiit, the Igloolik sewing centre, was founded in 1975.
The centre employed thirteen women who made traditional clothing to be
to the modern Naluat sewing collective, demonstrates the continued significance of sewing in Iglulingmiut culture. The centre suffered financial
hardships through its first four years, but was aided by a Canada Works
Grant in 1974. Cultural ventures continued to preoccupy people in Igloolik, marked by significant activities like the Elders’ oral history project that
48 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
collected more than five hundred memories over two decades, and the
Igloolik Archaeological Field School, which, for a decade brought professionals and students together to examine Igloolik’s distant past. The most
recent explosion of interest in traditional culture, life, and stories, has been
demonstrated in films from Igloolik’s Isuma Productions, with Atanarjuat
and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen sharing with the world both ancient
and recent stories of great local importance.
In the 1950 to 1975 period, the Qikiqtaaluk Inuit passed from living
in about a hundred small, family-based communities that were fairly mobile, to populating just thirteen sedentary villages. Igloolik became one of
the largest of those permanent communities. People born while their parents
were living on the land absorbed changes that in other societies took many
generations to accept. Many Inuit Elders found powerful words to express this
drama. Around 1974, Piugatuk spoke to the Inuit Land Use and Occupancy
Project about the erosion of the isolation that had protected Igloolik and the
Amitturmiut.
When I was small we used to do what we wished, as if we were
owners. We had never seen a [Qallunaaq]. I finally saw one when
I was growing up. That was about the time Amaq, my brother’s
namesake, died. That [Qallunaaq] said that Igloolik was like a living person. Some white people had tried to come here but they
could not, because it seemed to run away. He said it seemed as if it
had died, because it now could be reached by Qallunaat.
One of Igloolik’s enduring leaders, Paul Quassa, was a member of the
generation that went to residential schools during the 1950s, and fought
to see Nunavut become a reality in 1999. He gave the following statement
about Igloolik during this period.
Igloolik | 49
This was when Igloolik already had the HBC, the RCMP, and the
Mission here. The only times my uncle or father came here was to
get supplies and maybe we would come here for Christmas . . .
Yes, it is changed. There has been a big change in every part of
it. We often say that it is not because we don’t like the Qallunaat.
It is not that. In the old days when we were kids, the RCMP would
come into the communities. When we saw Qallunaat, we would
say as if they were big people or scary, we would be taught to be
intimidated by the way they talked. Now though, after the change,
we can say that Qallunaat has arrived. The police are just police,
without policiarluq, without stigmatizing. I think with that, the
Inuit now feel more equal to non-Inuit compared to when I was a
child. We have more sense of ownership for our land, for our hunters and trappers, and so forth. Through the various land claims
boards, Inuit now have a say. Before, it was all done through Ottawa
or Yellowknife.
I think that is the whole process of what land claims are
about. I think that is taking place now . . . I believe it would probably be for our next generation to be stronger. They never experienced that assimilation process. I think that this generation could
be able to have more anticipation in deciding what to do for their
people. That is how it is a bit now but we are not in that actual
stage yet. We are not really comfortable running our community. My generation and my parents’ generation are still holding
onto this whole thing that has happened. Even for us who were
not there, it is painful. It has to be taken out, hopefully through
[the QTC], it will help. We are still carrying it. Hopefully, we don’t
carry it down to our next generation even though I think that may
have happened.
50 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
Endnotes
• Louis Alianakuluk: Milton Freeman Research Limited, Inuit Land Use
and Occupancy Project - Volume 1 (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1976), pp. 189 and 191.
• Cultural epicentre: Nunavut Tourism, “Igloolik,” available online at www.
nunavuttourism.com/igloolik.aspx (accessed 2012).
• 1953 RCMP report: Library and Archives Canada (LAC), RG 18, RCMP,
Accession 1985-86/048, Volume 55, File TA 500-8-1-12, Conditions
Amongst Eskimos - Pond Inlet, “Conditions Amongst Eskimos-Generally,”
15 June 1953.
• Mark Evaloarjuk: Example of speeches is part of the debate on pipelines
in: Northwest Territories, Legislative Assembly. Debates. 64th Session,
8th Assembly (18 October 1977), p. 26.
• Sea ice: Environment Canada, “Sea Ice: Where do we find it? – Foxe Basin,” available online at http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca (accessed May 2010).
• Hunting: Jennifer Vestey, “Igloolik Eskimo Settlement and Mobility,” MA.
McGill University, 1973, pp. 47-50; and John Bennett, Susan Diana Mary
Rowley, and Suzanne Evaloardjuk, Uqalurait An Oral History of Nunavut
(Montreal [Que.]: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004), p. 384.
• Louis Alianakuluk: Milton Freeman Research Limited, Inuit Land Use
and Occupancy Project - Volume 1, p. 195.
• Inuit beliefs: John MacDonald, The Arctic Sky: Inuit Astronomy, Star
Lore, and Legend (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum/Nunavut Research
Institute, 1998).
• Hubert Amarualik: Bennett and Rowley, Uqalurait, p. 383.
• Ilagiit nunagivaktangit and quote: Bennett and Rowley, Uqalurait, 383.
| 51
52 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
• Early qallunaat: W.C.E. Rasing, Too Many People’: Order and Nonconformity in Iglulingmiut Social Process (Nijmegen: Katholieke Universiteit, Faculteit der Rechtsgeleerdheid, 1994), pp. 47-48; and Nancy
Wachowich, Making a Living, Making a Life: Subsistence and the ReEnactment of Iglulingmiut Cultural Practices (Vancouver: UBC Press,
1981), pp. 44-46.
• Hunting practices and quotes: Rasing, Too Many People, pp. 51-52 and 53
• Ataguttaaluk and Atuat: Graham Rowley, Cold Comfort My Love Affair
with the Arctic. Montreal ([Que.]: McGill-Queen’s University Press,
2007), p. 13; and Fr. G. Mary-Rousseliere, “History of a Case of Cannibalism in Baffin Land,” Eskimo 78 (Summer 1968), 9-18.
• David Damas: David Damas, Igluligmiut kinship and local groupings:
a structural approach (Ottawa: Dept. of Northern Affairs and National
Resources, 1963), p. 28.
• Foxe Basin resources: David Damas, Iglulingmiut Kinship and Local
Groupings, p. 26.
• RCMP in the 1920s: RCMP Archives Management Section, File 84-0705, Annual Report, 1921-1962 (Pond Inlet Wallet-1) and Patrols, 19211941 (Pond Inlet Wallet – 2A).
• Christianity: Rasing, Too Many People, pp. 98-99 and 100-101; Frédéric
Laugrand and Jarich Oosten. Inuit Shamanism and Christianity
Transitions and Transformations in the Twentieth Century (Montreal
[Que.]: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010); Vestey, “Igloolik Eskimo Settlement and Mobility, 1900-1970,” p. 39; and Missionary Oblates
of Mary Immaculate in the Diocese of Churchill Hudson Bay, “Igloolik”,
available online at http://www.arcticomi.ca/2igloolik.html (accessed
February 2013).
• Fifth Thule Expedition: Vestey, “Igloolik Eskimo Settlement and Mobility,
1900-1970,” p. 31; and William Thalbitzer, “Scientific Results of the Fifth
Thule Expedition,” Geographical Review 2, 3 (July 1932), pp. 509-510.
• DEW Line: Anders, Northern Foxe Basin; An Area Economic Survey,
Endnotes | 53
1965 ([Ottawa]: Industrial Division, Dept. of Northern Affairs & National Resources; Northern Administration Branch, 1965), p. 58.
• Observations of Keith Crowe: Keith J. Crowe, A Cultural Geography
of Northern Foxe Basin, N.W.T. (Ottawa: Northern Science Research
Group, Department Of Indian Affairs and Northern Development,
1969), pp. 95 and 97.
• Paul Quassa: Paul Quassa and Louis McComber, We Need to Know Who
We Are: The Life Story of Paul Quassa (Iqaluit, NU: Nunavut Arctic College, 2008), p. 27.
• Qimmiit: LAC, RG 18, RCMP, Accession 1985-86/048, Box 55, File TA
500-8-1-12, Conditions Amongst the Eskimos - Pond Inlet, “Conditions
Amongst Eskimos – Generally, by J. R. Johnson,” 30 July 1959.
• A. P. Wight and Louis Uttak: Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP),
The RCMP and the Inuit Sled Dogs (Nunavut and Northern Quebec:
1950-1970), unpublished report (Ottawa: 2006), p. 28 and p. 497.
• Jim Cumming and Bill Donahue: The RCMP and the Inuit Sled Dogs:
Nunavut and Northern Quebec: 1950-1970, pp. 505-506 and p. 540.
• Gerhard Anders: Anders, Northern Foxe Basin, p. 52.
• Snowmobiles and qimmiit: Anders, Northern Foxe Basin, p. 80; and
Milton Freeman Research Limited, Inuit Land Use and Occupancy
Project - Volume 1, p. 164.
• Keith Crowe: Crowe, A Cultural Geography of Northern Foxe Basin.
• James Arvaluk: James Arvaluk and Noel McDermott, That’s my vision:
the life story of James Arvaluk. Iqaluit (NU: Nunavut Arctic College,
2008), p. 9.
• Schools: Norman John Macpherson and and Roderick Duncan Macpherson, Dreams & Visions: Education in the Northwest Territories from
Early Days to 1984 ([Yellowknife]: Northwest Territories Education,
1991); LAC, RG 85, Northern Affairs Program, Volume 1463, File 6001-5, Part 6, Northern Affairs and National Resources, “Draft Memorandum to Cabinet,” 21 April 1965; and Archives Deschâtelets, Commission
54 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
oblate des oeuvres indiennes et esquimaudes, File HR 8301.C73Z88,
“Letter to Father G. Levaque, Director, Indianescom, from D. W. Simpson, Assistant Director, re: construction of secondary and occupational
schools in Igloolik,” 18 February 1969.
• Petition: MLA Mark Evaluarjuk’s speech in NWT Hansard, Legislative
Assembly of the Northwest Territories, 8 May 1978.
• Noah Piugaattuk: MacDonald, The Arctic Sky, p. 163.
• Housing: Crowe, A Cultural Geography of Northern Foxe Basin, pp. 93-94.
• RCMP constable: LAC, RG 18, RCMP, Accession 1985-86/048, Box 55,
File TA-500-8-1-18, Conditions Among Eskimos - Igloolik, “Conditions
Among Eskimos Generally – Annual Report, by W. L. Donahue,” 22
January 1966.
• Eli Amaaq: John Bennett, Rhoda Innukshuk, and Susan Rowley, Indian
and Northern Affairs Canada Departmental Library Oral History Project (Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1996), p. 4.
• Rents: LAC, RG 18, RCMP, Accession 1985-86/048, Box 55, File TA
500-8-1-18, Conditions Among Eskimos - Igloolik, “Conditions Among
Eskimos Generally – Annual Report, by W. L. Donahue,” 7 February
1967.
• Advisory committees: Crowe, A Cultural Geography of Northern Foxe
Basin, 99.
• RCMP in Igloolik: LAC, RG 18, RCMP, Accession 1985-86/048, Box 55,
File TA-500-8-1-18, Conditions Among Eskimos - Igloolik, “Conditions
Among Eskimos Generally – Annual Report, by W. L. Donahue,” 22
January 1966. The quote is from an unknown author’s marginalia notes
on LAC, RG 18, RCMP, Accession 1985-86-048, Box 55, File TA 500-8-112, Conditions Amongst the Eskimos - Pond Inlet, “Conditions Amongst
Eskimos Generally, by T. Kushniruk,” 14 January 1961.
• Drinking: LAC, RG 18, RCMP, Accession 1985-86/048, Box 55, File TA
500-8-1-18, Conditions Among Eskimos – Igloolik, “Conditions Among
Eskimos Generally, Annual Report, by W. L. Donahue,” 15 January 1968.
Endnotes | 55
• RCMP and council effectiveness: LAC, RG 18, RCMP, Accession 198586/048, Box 55, File TA 500-8-1-18, Conditions Among Eskimos – Igloolik, “Conditions Among Eskimos Generally, Annual Report, by R. R.
Gordon,” 15 January 1969.
• Substance abuse: LAC, RG 18, RCMP, Accession 1985-86/048, Box 55,
File TA 500-8-1-18, Conditions Among Eskimos – Igloolik, “Letter to
Director of Northern Administration Branch from A. Huget, re: Conditions Amongst Eskimo, Annual Reports,” 10 February 1969. The person
interviewed by the QTC asked to remain anonymous.
• James Arvaluk: Arvaluk, That’s My Vision, p. 4.
• Noah Nasook: Deborah Evaluarjuk, “Noah Nasook,” Inuktitut, 71 (1990),
pp. 39-44.
• Crowe and religion in Igloolik: Crowe, A Cultural Geography of Northern Foxe Basin, pp. 81-82.
• Paul Quassa: Quassa, We Need to Know Who We Are, p. 25.
• Moving to the settlement: Nancy Wachowich, “Cultural Survival and the
Trade in Iglulingmiut Traditions,” Critical Inuit Studies An Anthology
of Contemporary Arctic Ethnography (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 2006), p. 127.
• Hamlet: NWT, Collection 305, Northwest Territories Department of
Local Government Fonds, Accession G-1998-013, Box 11, Turnover-Igloolik [22-020-609], “Hamlet Status Evaluation, Igloolik, NWT, By the
Department of Local Government,” 3 September 1975 (quote p. 6).
• Early 1970s: Nancy Wachowich, “Cultural Survival and the Trade in
Iglulingmiut Traditions,” p. 126.
• Human Adaptability Project: Roy J. Shephard and Andris Rode, The
Health Consequences of “Modernization” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); and A. Bushe, “Igloolik Scientific Research Centre,”
North, 20, 6 (Nov-December 1973), 22-23.
• Inummariit Society: Wachowich, “Cultural Survival and the Trade in
Iglulingmiut Traditions,” pp. 127-129.
56 | Qikiqtani Truth Commission: Community Histories 1950–1975
• Sewing: E. Miller, “Sewing and Science, Sewing and Struggle; Socializing Women’s Work in Igloolik, Northwest Territories,” Thesis, University
of Windsor, 1994; and Chris Neill, “Sewing Centre Runs on Will Power,”
Nunatsiaq News, Volume 7, No. 3, 28 September 1979.
• Piugatuk: Milton Freeman Research Limited, Inuit Land Use and Occupancy Project - Volume 1, p. 232.
• Paul Quassa: QTC, 12 September 2008, Paul Quassa.
M
uch Canadian writing about the North hides social,
cultural, and economic realities behind beautiful
photographs, individual achievements, and popular
narratives. Commissioned by the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, this
historical work and the companion volume of thematic reports
weave together testimonies and documents collected during the
Qikiqtani Truth Commission.
As communities in the Baffin region face a new wave of changes,
these community histories describe and explain events, ideas,
policies, and values that are central to understanding Inuit
experiences and history in the mid-20th century.